As described in the Lockton, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,592,546, home television viewers of a football game may attempt to predict, for example, the play to be called by the quarterback and then be scored on their success. As suggested by the patent, the overall control of this scoring is done by a one-way mass communications link from a central station; for example, it may be the SCA channel of an FM radio station or a vertical blanking interval (VBI-Teletext) of a television program itself. Then the score is stored at the home viewer's location, which can be characterized a remote data source, and is uploaded to a central station by, for example, a telephone call.
One difficulty with the foregoing is that the uploading of all information to a central computer via the telephone system may overload the telephone exchanges, especially in large cities. Of course, the same is true if a packet type system is used to collect data for final communication with a central telephone office. This might especially be of a Superbowl football game or a World Series baseball game. Of course, one of the incentives to playing the game--even if the player may have a relatively low score--is to determine his rank or percentile standing with regard to the remainder of the participants.
Another technique of evaluating responses to a broadcast television program is shown in the Von Kohorn U.S. Pat. No. 4,745,468 which discloses the technique of competing, for example, in a television game show. It is also stated to be applicable to a football game. Here the viewers' scores and/or responses are recorded on a magnetic card. Then the card may be physically taken to some central location to receive a prize. Here again, the ranking or percentile standing of a particular player is not immediately known.